Around Town: Ed Morton named Distinguished Citizen by Boy Scouts

Citizen Contributor,DONNA FIALA

12:04 PM, Nov 12, 2013

A huge round of applause goes to Ed Morton, who received the Distinguished Citizen Good Scout Award at a dinner last week, sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America. Morton has always been a shining star in our community as he quietly goes about making many positive things happen when people don’t even know of his efforts.

He has served on the Chamber of Commerce board for many years, as many of you probably know, but no one really knows how many others boards he serves on nor how many people come to him for advice and guidance. He is a brilliant man, highly educated, yet quiet about his accomplishments. Congratulations Ed. You’re the best!

Here is an important question to the community at large, and I’d really like to hear from everyone who has an opinion. It concerns the median landscaping. As you all know, for the last few years we didn’t add landscaping to any of the roads we were in the process of building when the great recession began.

Now we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but during that time, the county, in an effort to reduce maintenance costs, took out many of the gorgeous grassy areas and replaced them with low maintenance bushes (that appear to be dying rather than thriving). Most are very unattractive.

There are still a few gorgeous medians left, such as Livingston Road — what a beautiful road that is to travel, with beautiful grass and lovely flowering, bushy trees.

But have you been taking notice of some of the other medians? We used to be so proud of U.S. 41 East because the landscaping was gorgeous. Then they removed some of the grass and planted pricker bushes and hired outside help instead of our own employees. The bid included little maintenance to keep the costs even lower. I know we were being very wise and very frugal at a time of need. Collier County was also recognized around the state for its beauty.

Now I keep looking at dead branches just hanging from the tops of trees, or dead trees altogether, along with dead bushes, junk lying around, etc. Davis Boulevard also looks bad.

One of the many assets in having beautiful medians is the first impression visitors and tourists have when they arrive. I’ve been told many times that it aids tourism, and many more times that it assists the real estate industry in selling homes. We all know it adds to our property values. And it is a great selling point when trying to attract new business to the area. Why wouldn’t we want the same quality as we had before?

Meanwhile, Lee County is making a diligent effort to upgrade their medians to look like ours used to. Remember the 90’s when the commissioners wouldn’t spend any dollars for good maintenance or building of roads to plan for the future? It took six years to bring our community up to a quality we can be proud of!

So, what do you say? How would you vote? Do you want to invest in our beauty and future or would you rather save the money and grow a bigger reserve? Would you even want to possibly invest in a county wide MSTU (Municipal Services Taxing Unit) dedicated just to landscaping and maintenance? Please write to me or any of the other commissioners and voice your opinion (copy me as well). We need to hear from the community.